Previews

Burnout Revenge

Can the franchise of over-the-top racing make an impact on 360? Get on Live Revenge to find out...

Spiffy:

Hot visuals; same excellent gameplay; backed up by solid new Xbox Live features.

Iffy:

Long load times; a little slowdown here and there.

I remember thinking when I was playing Burnout Revenge on the Xbox back in September of last year, "I really wanna play this in high-def on the 360, man..." Little did I know that Criterion had obviously used telepathic trickery and begun porting the game over to its Xenon dev kits especially for me. And boy, am I glad, because I've been spending a lot of quality time with the final beta on 360 and it's shaping up to be pretty darned special indeed.

Of course, you've all played and loved the Burnout series to death, yes? It's widely accepted that Criterion knows how to craft some of the best over-the-top racing wrecking mayhem on the current gen of consoles, and Revenge for 360 looks only to strengthen that notion. So what's new, different and improved?

EA is making no bones about telling everyone that over 60 percent of Criterion's development cycle for Revenge on 360 has gone firmly into the online and Xbox Live feature set. What this boils down to is Live Revenge and the Save & Share features. Live Revenge essentially encompasses all of the online brutality you'd expect from a Burnout game and looks to even take it up a notch or two.

Live Revenge is a persistence online mode the tracks your relationships with other burners. The whole idea is that you'll know who kicked your ass (note to self -- this happens a lot!) and when they are online so you can target them, abuse them and get revenge. After all, this game's all about revenge, right? Those Xbox Live achievement junkies will be pleased to hear that there's a whole host of cool achievements to be had specifically created for Live Revenge too.

It goes a little deeper than that too. If you've nailed someone in the past, when you meet them again in a race, the system will warn you that there's a good chance these people are gunning for you ass. Revenge keeps track of the number of revenge takedowns that you perform on players, meaning that it's entirely possible to whale on one player multiple times and really piss them off. But in order to settle the score against someone who's your current rival, it only takes one takedown to bring things back in line.

The longer the relationship you have with another burner, the more intense it gets. After a certain amount of time, you'll become "arch rivals" and eventually the ultimate award of "nemesis" is bestowed on the both of you. With special rival stat tracking -- among a whole host of worldwide leader boards etc. -- you'll be able to keep tabs on how your rivals are stacking up against the rest of the online community. All of the Live Revenge implementation leads me to believe that Revenge on 360 will garner a pretty hardcore, fanatical following. I'm hoping this is the case...